Harris campaign asked Josh Shapiro if he was an Israeli agent
In his memoir Where We Keep the Light, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro recounts that Kamala Harris’s 2024 vetting team pressed him about his views on Israel – even asking, he says, whether he had ever been “an agent of the Israeli government” or communicated with an undercover Israeli agent. Shapiro, who was Jewish and a finalist to be Harris’s running mate before she chose Gov. tim Walz, called the line of questioning offensive though he or else described the vetting as professional. He was also asked whether he would apologize for comments he made about pro-Palestinian campus protests following the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack; Shapiro defended free speech while noting some protests crossed the line into unrest. He wonders in the book whether such Israel-focused grilling was aimed at him because he was the only Jewish candidate. The memoir appears amid speculation about a possible 2028 presidential run and as Shapiro has launched a reelection campaign for governor.
Harris campaign asked Josh Shapiro if he was an Israeli agent, new memoir reveals
Kamala Harris’s vetting team in 2024 asked Gov. Josh Shapiro (D-PA) if he was an Israeli agent, according to a new memoir from the Pennsylvania governor.
The book, Where We Keep the Light, details, in part, the Harris campaign’s fixation on Shapiro’s views on Israel. Shapiro, who is Jewish, was a finalist to be Harris’s running mate in the 2024 presidential election, though Harris ultimately picked Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN).
While Shapiro said the vetting process was “completely professional and businesslike,” it included at least one round of questioning that he deemed “offensive.”
“Have you ever been an agent of the Israeli government?” Dana Remus, a former White House counsel under President Joe Biden who became a senior member of Harris’s vetting team, asked him.
“Was she kidding?” Shapiro writes. “I told her how offensive the question was.”
“‘Well, we have to ask,’” Remus said, before asking a follow-up along a similar line. “‘Have you ever communicated with an undercover agent of Israel?’”
“If they were undercover, I responded, how the hell would I know?” Shapiro writes.
Shapiro was also asked by Harris’s team if he “would be willing to apologize for the statements I had made, particularly over what I saw happening at the University of Pennsylvania,” as pro-Palestinian protests erupted across college campuses after Hamas’s terrorist attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
“I believe in free speech, and I’ll defend it with all I’ve got,” he writes in the book. “Most of the speech on campus, even that which I disagreed with, was peaceful and constitutionally protected. But some wasn’t peaceful.”
Shapiro said he “wondered whether these questions were being posed to just me — the only Jewish guy in the running — or if everyone who had not held a federal office was being grilled about Israel in the same way.”
The book comes amid rumors he may seek the presidency in 2028. He is still gunning for state office, however, launching a reelection bid for the governor’s mansion in Harrisburg earlier this month.
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